Our Approach

It is often said that there is no one size fits all approach when it comes to ERP...Our approach provides flexibility as we guide you through the ERP project.

It started with a chat

The first step is of course a chat with one of our business development team to run through your requirements so that you can have a thorough understanding of whether you require Sage 200 or Sage 300 and the typical investment and commitment required. We will follow up with an information and prices document so you have a record of the initial estimated financial commitment. However it is during the CRA that you will start to get a clearer picture of the total project plan.

Seeing is believing

The next step is to arrange a tailored demo of Sage 200, Sage 300 and/or Sage CRM. In this one-to-one demo either face to face or via a webinar we can show you what you need to see and answer any questions you may have. This demo will be personalised to what your business may require out of the system, for example you may require commercials and stock or you may just require a financials and Business Intelligence system.

ERP Deployment – Hosted, On Premise, Cloud

Depending on which product suits your business best we have a range of options in terms of the deployment stage for your ERP software. Sage 200 and Sage 300 are both available as a hosted solution via our Oakley Private Cloud, or an On Premise version which can be installed on your servers.

Sage 200 does also have a couple more options in a monthly subscription model or for smaller businesses requiring a simple implementation a Sage 200 Online monthly subscription version.

Customer Requirements Analysis (CRA)

After making a decision to adopt ERP and work with Oakley the next step is a Customer Requirements Analysis in which your dedicated ERP consultant will spend a day or 2 on site to run through your business processes and map out your requirements. This does require a commitment in terms of your time to show our consultant your processes and a financial commitment in terms of a chargeable daily rate.

This document acts as our project plan and outlines vital information such as project timescales and software requirements. This document is one of the most important milestones in the ERP project as a whole and as such we do require your commitment to read and understand the next steps.

ERP Implementation

Our Consultant and Implementation manager will work with you to deliver the ERP system either hosted or On Premise and the timescales for this will be mapped out in the CRA. The biggest challenge often faced at this stage is how free your team are to work with our consultants and complete tasks to schedule.

ERP Training

Following on from the system being implemented the next step is ERP training which will enable you to effectively start using your system and understand the processes and workflows involved. We strongly recommend that you consider a continual training program with Oakley in which we can look at advanced functionality moving forwards or when you require new staff trained we can ensure they are prepared to use the ERP solution.

ERP Support

We offer two types of support for our customer base:

Pay as you go

Fixed Fee

The most popular choice is Pay as You Go due to the flexibility this provides and the fact that you only pay for what you use. The majority of customers prefer the fact that they will not be charged a fixed fee that could be unreflective of their actual support use. With fixed fee we have to charge an amount that covers the typical volume of support requirements and as such you can end up being charged an amount higher than if you are on Pay as you go. However the choice ultimately is of course which ever you feel more comfortable with.

ERP Development

Within Oakley we have a team of Sage approved developers (Oakley Software) that work on additional modules for Sage ERP systems and are specialists with IMan Integration. With IMan we can integrate a range of your industry applications with Sage such as Concur Expenses. Talk to our team about any additional integration work or functionality you would like with Sage and we can work out a plan of attack.

ERP Aftercare

We send out a monthly newsletter that provides tips and tricks to the system, featured additional modules and information about upgrades to your version of Sage.

Additionally our account management regularly contact you to check how your system is working and if you would benefit from any further tools such as additional training, new additional modules and anything else.